Tag Archives: Theodoros Pangalos

A list of the top 10 scaremongering quotes compiled by The Frog blog about the prospect of leftist anti-bailout party, Syriza, winning the next elections in Greece

1. ”…Lending to the country will cease!”

“Markets are reacting to the prospect of a Syriza victory, owing to its lead in the polls. They’re saying ‘guys, if you are going to hold elections in three months and make Syriza the government, we are informing you that we do not want to lend the country any money”.Health Minister Makis Voridis

2. “…there won’t be a single euro left in the banks”

“If [Syriza) are ever given the chance [to govern], which they won’t be, then the money will leave the banks, there won’t be a euro left”.Prime Minister Antonis Samaras

3. “…Not one euro will remain in the banks (I, at least, will take my money abroad)”

In imitation of the prime minister, one ‘usual suspect’ took the issue a bit further:
“Syriza’s secret agenda is the drachma. So, if the government falls not one euro will remain in the banks”.New Democracy lawmaker Adonis Georgiadis

Bonus: He went on to say that he would ‘take out’ his bank deposits before Syriza even forms a government.

“I’m not going to let [Giorgos] Varemenos (Syriza MP and a former journalist) take my money,” he added during a TV debate with the Syriza MP.

After the general outcry that followed, Georgiadis, without taking back what he said about a bank run, admitted that he should have been ‘less raw’ in his remarks, but insisted that it would be like “people were committing suicide” if Syriza won the elections.

4. ”… ATMs would shut down”

“If he [Alexis Tsipras] plays tough guy in Europe, it won’t be long before ATM machines shut down in Greece, just like they did in Cyprus”.Government spokesperson Sofia Voultepsi

5. “…Pensions will be lost!”

“If [Syriza’s declarations are implemented], I assure Greek pensioners that their worst nightmare will be become a reality when they go to the bank and do not get their pensionLabour Minister Yiannis Vroutsis

6. “…Mayhem will ensue”

“The markets are doing what they are doing to us because of the hint that Syriza will come. If it comes, then mayhem will ensue”.Development Minister Nikos Dendias

7. “…We will return to the drachma in one week!”

If [Alexis Tsipras] does what he said at the Thessaloniki Trade Fair, we will be back to the drachma in a week”.New Democracy lawmaker Adonis Georgiadis(he deserved another mention in the top 10)

8. “…the country will fall apart in 48 hours!”

“If Syriza becomes [the country’s] first party, the country will fall apart, no matter how many hands of elders Mr Tsipras kisses and how many foreigners he hangs out with”.Former deputy prime minister and prominent Pasok member Theodoros Pangalos

Bonus: Pasok’s historic member voted for New Democracy so that Syriza would not win in the elections.

9. “…Lafazanis’ image will adorn the new 1,000 drachma note!”

“ [If Syriza wins the elections], two options are available. The country will either beg its creditors for an even harsher memorandum or it will return to the drachma to the great satisfaction of Mr Lafazanis (a Syriza MP), whose image will most likely adorn the new 1,000 drachma note”.Administrative Reform Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis

10. “…they will burn and kill!”
“There will be so much hunger and stench that all those jumping up and down about the smiling boy Tsipras, who shakes it up before the Pope, or Dourou, will be on the streets and will burn and will kills”.Former deputy prime minister and prominent Pasok member Theodoros Pangalos Deservedly tops the list

I immediately started drawing parallelisms between the video and the whole Greek tax-evasion story. In many discussions with foreign journalists I have been asked to give my opinion on tax-evasion in Greece. It’s true that Greek citizens were inclined to evading as many taxes as they could and, to tell you the truth, they were feeling pretty fine with that. Why? Because the model was coming from above, from the political establishment and the business elite. They were and still are setting the example. The international press has only recently discovered the laters’ responsibility, hence the amount of articles and features on the lives of rich Greeks.

The RSA video gives an example of how the overall damage by numerous small cheaters can sometimes be bigger than the total damage of a handful of big cheaters. I sincerely believe that this is not the case for Greece. Credible data are not available to demonstrate that the amounts lost by the political establishment and the business elite’s practices are much bigger than the amounts lost by buying something without a receipt. And, in addition, many of the cases are much more complicated and at some point we are talking about a sort of a “double entry” to our tax-evasion database. For example, where do you categorize the damage of a lost public income from an unpaid tax fine? Under the citizen who did all he could to avoid paying (small cheater)? Under the tax officer who accepted the bribe (medium cheater)? Or under the politician who intervened to the local tax office so that the citizen, a friend (i.e. a potential voter) gets treated with preference (and yes, he is a big cheater because he is hoping for thousands of votes to get re-elected)?

In September 2010, the then vice-chairman of the Greek government, Theodoros Pangalos, has given the following speech at the Parliament.

Translation: The answer to the people’s angry question that is directed against the politicians of the country “how did you eat [spend] the money?” is this: We hired you. We ate [spent] them all together. In the framework of a relationship of political clientelism, corruption, buying and ridiculing the very sense of Politics itself.

Speaking about the responsibility of political clientelism in the Greek crisis, though true, he unashamedly blamed the small cheaters (i.e. voters) in order to cover the big cheaters’ (i.e. politicians) damage. Paradoxically he fell in his own trap by admitting that he is a big cheater. It was such an unashamed statement that he even created a website where people would input their own stories. And in the end he turned the whole story in a book which is sold on the website.

In what society do leaders depend on individuals to set a prudent example for the politicians?

It’s this unanswered puzzle, that will never be answered in consensus, that has prevented any move forward to be fully legitimised, especially when the move forward is driven by the same people who brought us here. Society was, is and will be strongly divided among these things, left or right, cheater or honest, public sector employees or private sector employees, clean or dirty means of accumulating wealth, what did you or your father do during the good years, etc (the duos’ list is almost infinte).

It seems that these divisions are here to stay. There are few attempts, and certainly not from the politicians’ side, to ease them (see the recent strike of the Athens Metro employees where it was attempted to turn passengers against strikers). They actually take advantage of these natural and artificial divisions, turning one part of society against another, which explains why the traditionally angry rioting Greeks have not been able to form a common front in order to create a “new page” as the video suggests. And we so desperately need a “new page” in order to re-start writing our history. Looking at some international examples, nations with a dirty past opened a “new page” with the creation of a Truth Commission (e.g. South Africa). We, in Greece, haven’t even dared to launch an independent audit about our public debt. The former-communist countries had another tactic. A process that was called “lustration“, i.e. a cleansing.

Well, we need one too in order to inspire people to become honest again. Like their politicians.

PS. Funnily the RSA video refers to the financial crisis at the end too.

Former vice-chairman of the government and a veteran politician, Theodoros Pangalos is known for not really being careful of what he says. As Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 1990s he called Germany “a giant with the brain of an infant” causing diplomatic mayhem. During the economic crisis he has become more than famous (and hated) by his phrase “we ate them together” which became the single most descriptive motto of the government’s campaign to impose a collective guilt to the Greek society.

When invited to a SKAI TV talk show, Pangalos started the usual anti-syriza terrorizing crescendo which climaxed with this quote:

The Greek people are discovering the arbitrariness of [Mr. Tsipras’] reasonings but also the arbitrariness of his behavior. The country is all of a sudden full of [SYRIZA] people who give orders, snub their opponents and correct them by only having 16% [of the votes]. Imagine, if this 16% becomes 20% or 24%, they will start executing people…

Here’s the video. It’s from May 17. The above quote, for the Greek speaking people, is at the end of the clip.

The co-ruling PASOK party had its national conference today. Its goal is to elect the new party leader who will succeed George Papandreou and will lead the Socialists in the coming elections. The candidates are Christos Papoutsis and Evangelos Venizelos. At some point, an old man, member of PASOK himself, approached Venizelos, complained about the cuts in his pension and then threw him a yogurt before being carried out by bodyguards outside the hall.

This is the latest in a series of food throwing that has reemerged during the past two years of the crisis as a means of political protest.

Greek yogurt

Originally, “yogurt throwing” was a means of protest against authority by Greek youngsters in the late 1950s. They were called “Teddy Boys”, a name borrowed from the homonymous British subculture. You see, food throwing was traditionally a form of protest (preferable rotten eggs or tomatoes) but it was only in 1950s when the plastic cup substituted yogurt’s classic ceramic pot, a marketing move that made yogurt a non-lethal weapon. The trend of yogurt-throwing was fiercely fought by the authorities with the legendary “Law 4000/1958” according to which offenders were arrested, had their heads shaved and paraded through the streets of Athens.

A teddy boy is paraded in the streets of Athens with his head shaved.

The law also inspired a movie (Law 4000). Here’s a great excerpt that needs no subtitles.

The law was withdrawn in 1983, by Andreas Papandreou. In 1997, a builder who was member of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) threw a yogurt on the then Minister of Employment, Miltiadis Papaioannou (now Minister of Justice) and his then Deputy Minister Christos Protopappas (now PASOK’s Parliamentary Group Representative) . The court decided that yogurt throwing was not an offense that had to be tried automatically but only if a lawsuit is filed by the victim.

During the past two years of the Greek crisis, attacks by angry citizens against politicians have become a frequent phenomenon. At the beginning there were verbal attacks, in restaurants and in the streets. Politicians began to walk less freely in the street without bodyguards, especially after Kostis Hatzidakis, a New Democracy MP, was brutally attacked by protesters in December of 2010.

The verbal attacks are still the norm wherever politicians appear in public (e.g. see what happened in the 28th October military parades – btw these days the government had a meeting to assess the security situation in view of the 25th of March Independence Day parades) Soon food throwing reappeared. The most popular “weapons” have been yogurt, eggs and, at times, tomatoes.

According to an article of Eleftherotypia newspaper, written by Georgia Linardou, in 2011 two members of the government and one MP have been attacked with yogurts. Last March, the vice president of the government Theodoros Pangalos was attacked while having dinner at a town just outside Athens. Some months later, Minister of Interior Haris Kastanidis was attacked in a similar fashion while watching “Midnight in Paris” at a cinema in Thessaloniki. Liana Kanelli, an MP with the Communist Party of Greece, has also been attacked with yogurt in June 2011, while she was trying to get through a block of protesters in order to reach the Parliament for the vote on the Mid-Term Program.

As for attacks with eggs, the list is longer, probably thanks to the different characteristics of this sort of food when used as a missile (their position on the day of the attack):

Manolis Othonas, Deputy Minister for Citizen Protection

Ilias Mosialos, Minister of State

Kostas Skandalidis, Deputy Minister of Agriculture

Andreas Loverdos, Minister of Health

Anna Diamantopoulou, Minister of Education

Giorgos Petalotis, Government Spokesman

Also:

Asterios Rontoulis, MP with LAOS

Dora Bakoyanis, Democratic Alliance party leader

Spiros Taliadouros, MP with New Democracy

In 2010 Alekos Alavanos was also attacked, with yogurts, during SYRIZA’s campaign for that year’s local elections.

Many politicians have criticized this form of protest. KKE’s leader, Aleka Papariga, has said that yogurt-throwers are people who have voted for PASOK or New Democracy and that the act itself is not some particular act of resistance but rather a bourgeois reaction that defuses the social discontent. Deputy Minister of Regional Development, Sokratis Xinidis, preferred some self-criticism when he said “The time has come for all of us to pay the price. I am ready to be thrown a yogurt…”

There’s a great article about the presence of food in Greek politics. It’s called “Bread, Milk, and the Greek Parliamentary Record” and is written by Leo Vournelis, here. Another interesting aspect can be read in “Eating in Times of Financial Crisis” also hosted on the website of the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition.

Finally, let me remind the readers of a historical recurrence. This is the second time that Evangelos Venizelos is trying to win the leadership of PASOK. The first time was back in 2007, in a mutiny-styled manoeuvre when he appeared as a candidate practically on the same night his party, then led by George Papandreou, lost the elections. In the following days few cared about the newly elected government – the top story was what was happening inside PASOK. In those polarized (for PASOK supporters) times, another party member threw a coffee on Venizelos while he was entering the party offices.

What I still remember from that video is Venizelos’ reaction. See at 1:33 for a better a view of it. Scary isn’t it?

This is how the vice-president of the Greek government, Theodoros Pangalos, was received in Berlin by local Greek activists (of the Real Democracy movement). The banner stated support for the 400 strikers of Hellenic Halyvourgia steel industry. They’ve been on strike for about two months, one of the biggest labor actions for decades. The strike has been greatly underreported in the Greek media, causing concern and suspicion.

A new political party has been formed in Greece. It’s official inauguration took place last Monday at a hotel in Athens. Its name is “National Unity League” and is composed by… (guess what! … ok I know, you’ve already read the title) retired army officers!

There has been enough talk in Greece (and abroad) during the past months about a possible coup d’ etat (see end of post “Greece spirals out of control“) but it seems that the politicized members of our military have found a bypass to the internationally chilling idea of a dictatorship.

The new political formation is composed mainly by officers who graduated from Greece’s Military Academy (Scholi Evelpidon) in 1981. They have stated their intention to participate in the coming elections. The inauguration took place on the national Armed Forces’ Day. Their logo is shaped by three parallel coloured lines which represent the land, the air and the sea. According to their initial announcements, these three elements symbolize our national sovereignty which are challenged today by the actions and the neglects of the current political establishment.

The logo of National Unity League (Σύνδεσμος Εθνικής Ενότητας)

The naming of the new party is not coincidental with the Military League, a movement in the ranks of the Greek Military created back in 1908 which, in a similar situation for the country, intervened in Greek politics through the Goudi coup a year later. It never imposed a military dictatorship but managed to put an end to an older rotten political system, brought down two governments until Eleftherios Venizelos (yeah, just like the name of the Athens airport!) came to power and begun a wide program of reforms which greatly modernized Greece. The popular support for that movement was impressive and, in the end, it was one of the reasons that it worked without having the stain of a “dictatorship”.

The stamp of the Military League

The National Unity League is a vague connotation which wants to remind Greeks that a new leader can be brought forward (like Venizelos in 1909) who can help the country overcome the multiple troubles it now faces. Of course, societies in a state of a crisis need something more than simple solutions. They need a Messiah. Which is why this association to the Military League might find a fertile ground in many naive Greeks. Allow me to be a bit pessimist over here. A quick reading about the Military League would be informative. One of the first conspirators of the Military League, back in 1908, was Theodoros Pangalos who continued in a long military and political career and gave Greece his grandson, our current Deputy Prime Minister, also called Theodoros Pangalos. Another (non-commissioned) officer of the team was Nikolaos Plastiras who, through a similar career, founded the Centrists’ Union party after WWII and formed a coalition government together with Sofoklis Venizelos (the son of Eleftherios) and George Papandreou (the grandfather of George Papandreou who resigned just recently). A nice, warm, family atmosphere, this is what Greek politics are.

Anyway, back to the National Unity League. Here are some of the basic proposals the new party has to offer:

To carry out an audit of the Greek public debt in order to estimate what percentage of it is odious and, thus, write it off.

To exploit the advantages of the fact that 90% of our external debt is under Greek law.

To claim the repayment of the compulsory loan that Greece gave to Germany during the country’s German occupation in WWII.

To restructure the public sector, having as a goal the improvement of its efficiency and not only its horizontal reduction of its personnel.

To reorganize it according to the principles of having the smallest number of employees that is necessary and of allocating them logically.

To introduce a common salary system for the core and wider public sector (the Ministries as well as publicly owned companies & public utility enterprises), to reduce bureaucracy with the help of IT and the internet, to abolish all non-productive public organizations, to merge different public services which have the same scope and to evaluate continuously the performance of public servants.

To cut drastically the cost of public administration.

To abolish the abusive rights of certain professional groups.

To produce from scratch new budgets for spending.

To introduce a penal responsibility for the managers of public administration.

Politically the first three points are enough to describe what they would like to do if they would be called to run the country. The other seven bullet points are plain common sense and I guess that most of my foreign readers would probably think “Are these Greeks crazy? Haven’t they done that already?”

There is a 12-member managing board currently running the party, headed by retired officer Nikos Alikakos. Funnily, former PASOK MP and Minister during the 1980s, Lefteris Verivakis was booed when he tried to greet the crowd during the inauguration. He used to be a close associate of Andreas Papandreou 30 years ago but he lately had an ideological rightward turn and he even greeted the crowd of Makis Voridis’ Hellenic Front at the party’s 2nd Congress in 2005. Verivakis then said that “the distinction is not anymore between Right and Left, but between patriots and internationalists” and later highlighted the importance of the patriotic powers in the struggle against globalization.

Now you can make up your own mind on what sort of people gather in these places.

This is the 3rd part of Greek journalist Pavlos Papadopoulos’ article on the run-up to the current Greek economic crisis, published by “To Vima” newspaper (16/10/2011). The first part of the article is here and the second part is here.

“The Prime Minister regretted for not insisting to have the Memorandum voted by 180 MPs” says a Minister. This was a proposal that came from Mr. Venizelos and Mr. Pampoukis but the rest of the Cabinet members disagreed. Papandreou regretted for not adopting that proposal because, if he had done it and New Democracy wouldn’t vote for it, he could call for an early election. According to converging sources, Papandreou thought that the Memorandum couldn’t be implemented by a one-party government. This is not what he expected when he was counting on an “international solution” (see Part 2 for an explanation of the international solution).

The extraordinary political and social circumstances tested his psychological strength, his close associates were well aware of that. He was feeling trapped in power. In many occasions the men of his security team tried to prevent him from appearing in public which was something he could never think of. He gave considerable thought to the idea of calling an early election at the same time with the local elections in November 2010 but he hesitated once more due to the tight time constraints for the disbursement of the bailout installments.

On the morning of 15 June, the day the Medium-Term Program (the so-called Memorandum No2) was brought to the Greek Parliament, while the prime ministerial car was heading to the Maximou Mansion, some gathered citizens welcomed him with a rain of eggs (see video above). For Papandreou, that experience was decisive. He was personally hurt. He reckoned that the attack was an indisputable sign of destabilization, given the fact that at the same time in Syntagma riots were reaching a climax. When he arrived in his office he called Antonis Samaras. “The country is being dissolved. We must form a government of cooperation” he suggested. “The PM should be a third person” was the answer of New Democracy’s leader. “I have no problem” replied Papandreou with an emotionally charged voice and added “I will not become an obstacle to my country’s salvation”. For New Democracy it was a sudden “cold shower”. They didn’t want this development and they were not ready to govern. They leaked the information in order to provoke the expected reactions which would cancel the deal.

The Prime Minister’s associates called Nikos Papandreou who rushed to the Maximou Mansion and discussed with his brother. They were just the two of them for quite some time. Nobody knows what was discussed. People who know them insist that they are totally aligned politically and they always act after mutual consultation. According to some sources, the Andreas Papandreou’s second son also called Antonis Samaras, whom he knows personally through the friendship of the New Democracy leader with the Prime Minister. “If you form a government of cooperation, you’ll share the price” he allegedly said to Samaras. However, this specific information has not been officially confirmed.

While the drama of a soon-to-resign Prime Minister was evolving at the Maximou Mansion, the hesitant coup of Mr. Venizelos was unfolding at the Ministry of Defense. Already by Tuesday 14th of June, those who had visited the Minister of Defense were left with the impression that he was about to resign. An MP who visited him had the impression that the secretaries were collecting the Minister’s folders. Venizelos himself was implying in his discussions that he could even resign. Of course, he would never mention the word “resign”. “You tell me. What should I do?” was his meaningful question to his interlocutors. This stance inspired other PASOK MPs, as Paris Koukoulopoulos, Kostas Spiliopoulos, Nikos Salagiannis and Dimitris Lintzeris, who were promoting at the Parliament the idea of a government’s overthrow. This “rebellious atmosphere “ is said to have influenced PASOK MP Yannis Floridis who finally decided to resign irrespective of what the Venizelian wing would do. The day after Papandreou’s failure to form a government with Samaras, several MPs who were loyal to the Prime Minister were ordered to appear in front of tv cameras and remember the “ghost of Apostasy” (read more about the history of Apostasy/July events/Royal coup) in order to restrain the Venizelians’ attack. The 46-year-old ghost has once more served the Papandreou family. At the same time Papandreou proceeded to a government reshuffle and at 4am of the 17th of June, he appointed Venizelos to take the responsibility of the economy since, for the second time in two years, Lucas Papademos had declined to head the Ministry of Finance. A historic member of PASOK said for Venizelos: “An apostate in the morning, a vice-president in the evening”.

Greek Minister of Finance, Evangelos Venizelos

Venizelos was reassured by the Prime Minister that night that he could have as Deputy Minister the chairman of the National Bank of Greece, Vasilis Rapanos. However, instead of him, he got Pantelis Oikonomou who, as soon as he accepted the post, took all his speeches off his website. He was against the Memorandum in all of them. Another important point is that Venizelos demanded from the Prime Minister to strip Theodoros Pangalos from his responsibilities. He wanted to be the only vice-president in the government. The Prime Minister invented a “Solomon solution”: he formed a governmental commission without the participation of Pangalos. In that way, Venizelos was “first vice-president”. Thanks to his special political weight, his popularity and his rhetorical prowess, he “passed” the Medium-Term Program from the Parliament. Even if that was partly because he “checked” the intra-PASOK dissident MPs who he himself controls.

The “first vice-president” accepted the Ministry of Finance because he estimated that the Prime Minister would laterbe obliged to call for elections in which PASOK would be defeated and thus he would substitute Papandreou as the party leader. “I know that Evangelos wants elections but I won’t do him the favor” Papandreou is said to have commented to one of his associates during the summer. Most Ministers in their personal discussions they accuse Venizelos of postponing the implementation of the Medium-Term Program’s commitments while waiting for elections. With the possibility of having him as their leader in the near future though, they are very careful in their public statements. When, on the 2nd of September 2011, the troika demanded the immediate implementation of the reforms, Venizelos unexpectedly suspended the negotiations. The heads of the troika left Athens within a few hours.

The troika’s embargo against Greece lasted for 27 days. The delay of the bailout’s sixth installment was in no way agreed and the responsibility for bringing the state on the verge of a domestic cessation of payments lies completely to the Minister of Finance. Highly respected European sources say that the deviation from the agreed commitments has overthrown the, generous for Greece, deal of 21 July. The new negotiation, with an uncertain and (probably) worse outcome, is under way. According to Greek and foreign officials, Greece has been ostracized from that deal. Two years after PASOK’s election victory, the improvisations are continued and the uncertainty keeps intensifying…